I would redesign the way it mounts to the upper control arm but basically that is the design. The main reason for it is the mismatch in shock length which makes a conventional design ineffective.

Any thoughts and opinions would be greatly appreciated!

~Jonathan

first thought would be that in that installation you need shocks with spherical bearings top and bottom.

Is it is it will twist the bushes pretty badly as the suspension moves, won't it?

You will probably want to move the shock mount as far out as possible. You will suffer from bending moments on the arm. Your arm looks short/stubby which would help to prevent bending, but this also means that the shock mount is very close to the chassis pivots - you will get alot of wheel travel compared to shock compression. This may mean you need to increase the spring rating to take the increased mechanical advantage into account - or at least thats the way it looks to me from the pictures(thats looking at the free arm on the left in the first picture).

Also, on the top mount position, you could weld in a vertical piece between the top rail and the cross strut below. That should help stop any tortional twist of the top rail. This should help prevent fatigue failure/stress of the end welds of the top tube and probably make the suspension feel more responsive.

Complete rethink is needed.
At the wishbone end mounts will fatigue and break the welds, top mount is the wrong way round and is welded to to member nowhere near a node.

Weld another bar across and put a piece between them to weld the bracket to.
Rescued attachment PICT2163.JPG

I agree: this does not look like the best mounting. First, at the wishbone, I think the damper need to be mounted as near to the edge as possible. I assume the damper is too long to mount in the proper location, i.e., vertically. Is this true?

If this are the dampers you will use and you cannot mount to the shock towers, perhaps you could use a lever system similar to mine.. It is not the easiest to design, but if done properly, you would get a pregressive solution (mine is 20%). It also takes up boot space, which is a bit of a down side. On a plus note, you certainly seem to have the support system on top of your rear suspension box.

The thing about your proposed upper mounting is that 1.) your bushing will crumble in no time and 2.) if the mounting breaks, it could--feasibly--shove through the back of your head.

I'm no expert, so take this as an opinion...

--Chris